The Organization of Chipped-Stone Economies at Piedras Negras ...

7.3: HYPOTHESIS SET 2: SYMBOLISM AND VALUE OF DEBITAGE AND
CHIPPED-STONE ECCENTRICS
7.3.1: Hypothesis 3
The third hypothesis is that the royal palace had more access to production
debitage than did other residential groups in the site. That is, the total production
evidence from the palace and from royal caches and burials was significantly greater than
anywhere else during a given time period. For this test I examine ratios of production
evidence from the palace, royal caches, and burials to the production evidence from the
remainder of Piedras Negras. Based on production evidence from general excavations
alone, the acropolis does not stand out as a depository for production debitage. For
obsidian production debitage, the acropolis ranks among the highest in percentages of
production to nonproduction-related artifacts (39.58% for the Yaxche phase and 38.56%
for Chacalhaaz times), though not in overall total debitage count 19 (see Table 7.6).
The situation is similar for microcrystalline-quartz materials where 77.27% of the PN46
artifacts were identified as production debitage for the Yaxche phase and 62.71% for the
Chacalhaaz phase. Production debitage counts also were average (see Table 7.5).
Although scant pieces of eccentric production evidence were found on the
acropolis, the majority of these rare artifact types (see Section 6.4.3 and Table 7.3) came
from Operations PN23 and PN33 from the South Group Plaza area. The same pattern is
found with the even less-common examples of debitage from the production of
microcrystalline-quartz eccentrics. Only a few notching flakes made of microcrystalline-
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